Though I'm no fan of pop/punk or emo, it seems obvious that Friendly No One is reluctantly heading there anyway, so they might as well embrace it. Bolster those choruses up with some layered angst-ridden vocals, add a little slick studio effects engineering on the guitars and WHAMMO! another local act capable of cashing in on the sizable market for band's like Dropping Daylight, Quietdrive, and Motion City Soundtrack.
As an album, Cleveland Specials suffers a bit from both a lack of hooks and diversity. Though there are bright spots, "Guatemala in my Breastpocket," for example, kicks out a bit more energy than the rest of the tracks. And "Faire le Poireau" displays some interesting guitar sounds. But surpassingly, it's the failed efforts to get outside of their typical sound which spoils the lot. Many of the songs feature short exploratory outros which add little to the songs themselves and fail to develop into worthwhile excursions.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a proud lover of all things weird and dissonant. Hell, you could fart through a trombone for an hour and a half I'd probably enjoy it just because I've never heard it. But then again, Kenny G could do it and I'd hate it. Because that's basically what he always does, whether it's sustaining a single tone for ten minutes or carving out the perfect new age dental office soundtrack. My point is, I love experimentation as much as I hate posers. So, naturally, nothing ticks me off as much as when a band uses a little dash of experimentation as some sort of posture. Now I have no idea what Friendly No One was thinking when they worked on those outros, but I must say they feel egregiously out of place, and in fact highlight the relative blandness of the rest of the album.
www.friendlynoone.com
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